


some things were never said

by anotherthief



Series: you're in every story [1]
Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: F/M, Minor Character Death, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Series, Post-War, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 22:55:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11473362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherthief/pseuds/anotherthief
Summary: Hawkeye cleans out his dad's desk and finds the letters he wrote him from Korea.





	some things were never said

**December, 1956**  
  
His dad dies on a Thursday. It's a rather unremarkable day. There's a light drizzle in the morning that fades by noon, and the sun finds a way through the clouds and stretches out through the open window, falling across Daniel Pierce's bed. Hawkeye is holding his hand, the pretense of checking his dad's pulse long forgotten as he sits entranced watching his father's chest rise and fall slower and slower until it stops. Hawkeye squeezes his dad's hand and lays it on the bed. He hears birds somewhere out enjoying what is turning into a sunny winter afternoon in Maine.  
  
Yes, a rather unremarkable day, except he woke up this morning with a living father and he'll go to bed tonight without one. The tears on his cheeks fall quietly.

 

\-------

 

**April 6, 1957**  
  
  
[Day One]

Hawkeye drums his fingers on the steering wheel.

He’s only been driving for two hours. He could still turn around, find what’s left of his sanity, go home. He could. He’s clearly having a mental breakdown.

He could turn around -

_he could_.

He won’t.

He wonders how something so simple led him here. He was just cleaning out his dad’s home office. Doing what you do in those months after a loss, sorting through what’s left of a life.

And now he’s lost his damn mind.  
  
  
He turns up the radio.

 

\-------

 

**January, 1957**

Papers are scattered in all directions. Important things like deeds and bank account information, but also newspapers clippings and god knows what else. There are notes and reminders he has no idea what to do with including a small but growing stack of notes in his mother's handwriting. Grocery lists, recipes, reminders for his father - almost all of it inconsequential, but Hawkeye knows that, like his dad, he won’t be able to part with any of them. The most he can hope for is to achieve a better filing system. His stacks, while strewn about and messy now, are a start, and will keep him busy this week at least. Hawkeye is not accustomed to so much time by himself once the work day is done. Keeping an ever growing list of tasks to tackle around the house is the one thing helping him feel like he has his head above water.

He opens the next desk drawer and is surprised to see it's not completely stuffed full of unorganized papers. Oh sure there are a few floating around the bottom, but sitting on top is a stack of mail bound with string. The top envelope is postmarked Korea. Hawkeye doesn't have to look to know the ones underneath are likely the same. His Dear Dad letters. Hawkeye slips the string binding off the letters and picks up the top envelope. It's worn around the edges. He pulls the letter out and sees it's dated from the spring of 1951.

Hawkeye unfolds the letter and reads a few lines, getting lost in stories, some long forgotten. Trapper and Henry and the gang spring forth from the pages where they are forever trapped in early 1951 Korea. Hawkeye refolds the letter and slides it back into its envelope to join the others. Part of him wants to add them to the mental list of piles destined to meet a fiery end in the backyard with a collection of limbs and other yard trash. But something in him can't quite bring himself to do it.

He sets the stack to the side. Maybe he should reread them, just once and then really decide. He shakes his head, already questioning this plan, but moves on to the next drawer.

 

\-------

 

**April 7, 1957**    
  
  
[Day Two]

Hawkeye stares blankly ahead. He thinks he’s still somewhere in Iowa or Nebraska. He’s not really sure, it’s dark and all day it’s been one field rolling into the next. He’ll see another sign eventually.

He sighs.

He still doesn’t know how he got here. Because he really can’t blame it on cleaning out his dad’s office. It was the letters - finding them and reading them. But he just couldn’t bring himself to burn them or stick them back in a drawer. They represented the three longest years of his life, so long he could have sworn they were ten and certainly aged him by as much or more. They were not his idea of a good time, but most of those stories didn't make his letters home; the good times did, few and far between as they may have been, those he had decided might be worth reminding himself of. Trying to forget about his time in Korea hadn’t gotten him anywhere.

He came home from the war. He reconnected with friends. He built up his practice. He dated (a lot). He tried to push the last three years away, just a blip in an otherwise great life.

Except for the nightmares. And all the things he missed, weddings and funerals, and even just the everyday life things that happen in a small town. When he doesn’t laugh at the same jokes or act the same as he did before, they tell him he’s different. He never knows what to say back because he is different. But, he was trying so hard not to be.

He focused on work. He saw friends less. He dated less. When his dad got sick it was easy to pretend that skipping out on more social occasions than not was out of necessity and not a choice.

Hawkeye had tried forgetting so then he tried remembering.  
  
  
  
(He remembered long days and longer nights. Red, so much red. But also bad alcohol and worse food. Klinger’s favorite dress and Charles’ annoying stories. The crispness of the air on a cool morning, so different yet so familiar to home all at the same time, how it would make him ache.

He remembered a smile, one that never came freely, one you had to earn.

He remembered -

he remembered.)  
  
  
  
He catches sight of a sign up ahead, checks the map again, rubs his eyes, rolls down the windows. Just a few more miles and then he’ll find a motel.

 

\------

 

**February, 1957**

He reads the letters. He laughs. He cries.

He calls B.J. "Hey do you remember that time when...?" It feels good to catch up. B.J., Peg, and the kids are doing well. (It’s nice to know someone is.)

He calls Potter. He calls Radar. He goes down the list. It feels _good_. He can't track down some, and of course some he wouldn't call even if he could.

There's one call he should make but he doesn't. It slips his mind. (It didn't slip his mind.)

Hawkeye reads the letters, he touches base with most of the 4077th, puts the letters back in a drawer, and pretends he didn't notice. He goes about his day and pretends; it's easier that way. He's gotten very good at lying to himself. So good he hadn't noticed that he'd been lying to himself all along.

 

\-------

 

**April 8, 1957**  
  
  
[Day Three]

Somewhere in Utah he stops for dinner. A waitress at a roadside café flirts up a storm with him. She has bottle blonde hair but the wrong smile.

He should have just burned the damn letters.  
  
  
(He remembered everything.)

 

\------

 

**March, 1957**

The problem with lying to yourself is that it takes work, and generally Hawkeye has always been fairly work averse.

He forgets to forget, you could say.

He gets drunk, you could also say.

And he thinks about her. About fighting with her mostly, how they struggled every day to just make sense of the other, he pushed and she pushed back. But he also remembers laughter and bright eyes and holding her so close when they thought they were going to die, holding her while she cried, her breath on his neck and his arms holding her so tight.

He remembers the tenderness in her eyes and how terrified he was to want something so much in a place where everything could disappear in an instant.  
  
\---  
  
He gets drunk again a week later and he calls her. (He gets drunk again a week later so he _can_ call her.)

She answers on the third ring.

“Hello?”

“You’re in every story.” The words tumble out of his mouth before he realizes it.

“What? Who is this?” she asks, irritation evident in her voice.

“Can you believe that? Because I couldn't not until I was reading them one after the other. Bossing us around and laughing at our scrapes and yelling at me for whatever stupid thing I'd done recently and somehow it just all sort of made sense."

“... Hawkeye?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“What the hell? Are you drunk?”

“Quite possibly, but that’s not the point.”

“By all means please tell me what the point is because you’ve got about a minute before I hang up.”

“Well, see my dad died and I found the letters, the ones I wrote to him during the war.” On the other end of the line he hears her softly say his name but he keeps going. “So I found them and I started, I don't know entirely why, I mean I do but I don't. Because the letters well, you know, I wrote home more about, about the good days. And I thought. I thought maybe it would help to remember more of the good, and not just try to block it all out all the time. So I started reading them. And there you were. You’re in every story.”

“And so you got drunk and called me to tell me you wrote home about me?”

“No, I called you to tell you I was an ass -”

“Well, that I knew.”

“- and I love you.”

“Hawkeye,” she breathes his name out like a curse, then sighs. “When did your dad die?”

“December.” He whispers, his voice suddenly caught in his throat.

“I’m sorry to hear that. But you’re drunk and should probably go to bed, it’s what 4 a.m. over there?”

He knows he should argue back but something stops him. She’s never going to believe him over the phone. So instead he runs his hand through his hair and says, “Yeah, something like that.”

“Go to bed.” Her voice is soft, but stern. They say goodnight; she hangs up first. He listens to the dial tone then places the phone back in its cradle. He finishes his drink and crawls into bed hoping he’ll wake up in the morning and have forgotten all of this.

(He won’t.)

 

\------

 

**April 9, 1957**    
  
  
[Day Four]

Hawkeye clears his throat, suddenly having no idea how to start. They sit in silence. A minute passes, then two. All the hours he spent in the car rehearsing what he would say and now he's here sitting on a bench with her and words are failing him.

"So you got in your car and drove from Maine to Sacramento."

Margaret's cutting her eyes at him, sort of incredulously and something else, maybe annoyance. He shakes his head, looks around as if the words he needs could be plucked from the air surrounding them.

"Well, you didn’t like it when I called you.” He huffs, unclear on how he’s already pissed her off. He did drive all the way here to see her.

“Because you were drunk and it was the middle of the night.”

“Yes, well. I tried talking to you on the phone and when that didn’t work I - oh quit looking at me like that.”

“Like what? I’m just looking at you.”

“No, you’re looking at me like I’m crazy and like - see, that's the whole problem, that’s always been our problem. You assume that I've done something stupid and well a lot of the time I have but this time. I didn't - I mean I drove however many hours to get here, to see you and you're looking at me like I'm crazy and like, like you're mad at me and -

"Well - oh shut up for a second." She bats down the hand he had raised in an attempt to interject. He closes his mouth, his lips thinning into sort of a grimace. She rolls her eyes and starts again. "You're not making a whole lot of sense or really giving me much to go on. But you did drive out here to see me. So why don't you quit flailing about, and just tell me whatever it is you came here to say." She sighs. "Or I'm going back to work, and you can figure it out before I get off tonight and tell me then."

Hawkeye starts to try to talk with his hands again but she's got the stubborn look in her eyes. He grips his knees, and takes a deep breath.

"I didn't forget you. That's what I can here to tell you. I couldn’t. I spent the last few years in Crabapple Cove getting on with my life and putting the war behind me but not entirely, no. I mean there's the nightmares -" he breathes out and she purses her lips, gives him an understanding nod. "- but those have gotten mostly better, fewer at least, especially once my dad got sick and I was worrying after him. But I, no, you know I finally have gotten to where I can go days at a time without thinking about everything else, except... for you. And I mean. I didn't forget everyone else either. I don't think I ever could. But it wasn't until I was reading the letters and sort of remembering it all, the whole story from start to finish, why it was that out of everyone, you were the one who sort of stayed with me..." he trails off.

"So you missed me and you drove four days to tell me that?"

"Well, yeah if you wanna get right to the point. I guess." He pauses. "I think. I think I loved you then, and I know. I know what I said. And I still could be right. We were different and didn't always have the easiest time getting along." She gives him a pointed look. "Ok, we were basically oil and water, but what I'm trying to say is there was also a war going on. I couldn't see the future then, any future for anyone or anything. I couldn't see a way forward beyond getting out of there and back home, back to my dad and the life I was dragged away from."

She's still just looking at him and it's about to drive him crazier than he is already.

"Well, are you just going to stare at me?"

She rolls her eyes. "So four years ago, or longer, you loved me, and you came here to tell me that. I'm sorry Hawkeye, I'm just still not understanding what you expect me to say or do. It's been four years. We don't even know each other anymore. What should I do?" She arches an eyebrow at him. "Declare my undying love for you and throw myself into your arms?"

The corners of his mouth twitch up. "Yeah, well that would be nice."

She hits his arm and rolls her eyes. "Good luck with that."

"I'm not. I'm not expecting anything. Hoping maybe. But hoping is very different. And no I mean that would be nice, yeah, but mostly I came here because I'm tired. I'm tired of going through the motions and trying to fold myself back into the person I was in ‘49. And I'm done waiting for my life to fall into place. I missed you. And I wanted to see you, to see if there was a chance you're feeling as lost as I am and maybe just maybe missed me too… and oh, what the hell. I love you. Period. I was hedging my bets earlier but the truth is I loved you then and I love you now and that’s what I came here to say. But of course I'll understand if you just tell me to bug off and go back to Maine."

They sit in silence for the next few minutes. Hawkeye is hot and his cheeks feel red but not from the sun beating down on his face.

“You don’t love me.” She says, quietly, and when he starts to open his mouth she cuts him off. “Maybe you did then, but you don’t know me now.”

“Why can’t you just believe me.”

She shakes her head. “I’m not the same person I was four years ago.”

“So do you want me to turnaround and head home?”

She gives him that look, like she’s sizing him up for a straight jacket, but then a small eternity later, she says, "Don't go back to Maine." She gives him a twisty sort of smile where it slides from one corner of her mouth to the other then bites her lower lip, like she's going against her better judgment. He grins back at her in response. She groans and leans back, looks at her watch. "Not today anyway. But look I have to get back to my shift. My break ended... too long ago. Meet me over there," she points to the door they came out of earlier, "at 7. There's a terrible little diner a few blocks away where we can have dinner. Food's barely tolerable, but they have good pie."

"And?" The word slips out before he can stop himself.

"And," she bobs her head, dragging out the word slightly, "we'll talk. And probably argue a lot if I had to guess. And," she stood, and turned towards him, "we'll go from there." She shrugs and turns on her heel and walks away.

He watches her retreat. Birds are chirping somewhere overhead.

Everything that just happened starts to sink in. He did a rather bungled job of telling her how he feels - but she didn't tell him to get lost.

He leans back and looks up, watches the birds add a twig to the beginnings of a nest.

It's a start.

  
  


\------

  
  


**epilogue**  
  
Later, they have dinner and Margaret’s right, they do argue a lot, falling back into the comfortable bickering matches that came so easily in Korea.

They also laugh.

He holds her hand when he walks her to her car.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Katie for being my cheerleader on this one.
> 
> Title comes from the HAIM song "Want You Back."


End file.
